Greg Lusk couldn’t make himself go to the Amarillo Botanical Gardens in the late hours of May 28. He knew it was bad, knew the recovery from the late freezes was for naught. The director of the Botanical Gardens waited for the next day’s first light to inspect the damage from the horrific late-night hailstorm that pummeled much of the city.

“It was worse than I thought,” Lusk said. “Everything was mowed to the ground. We had hail 6 inches deep in some places. It just shredded the whole place. If plants weren’t hidden behind something, they were gone.”

Angie Hanna, the Botanical Gardens’ volunteer coordinator, arrived shortly after Lusk. Her assessment was more blunt.

“This is what it looked like to me: Some crazed madman came in and just beat the plants to death,” she said. “It was like someone went on a venting rage on all the plants.”

Two months later, the 4.2 acres of Amarillo Botanical Gardens at 1400 Streit Drive appear to be in full bloom. The more than 20 gardens appear lush, and the colors of between 200 and 300 species spill over the grounds.

“It’s a complete reversal,” said Kevin Ball, the botanical gardens’ new executive director. “On a scale of zero to 10, when it was a zero, now it’s back to a 10, and it was headed to 10 before the hail.”

In late May, the botanical gardens was recovering from a difficult spring with surprising late freezes. The garden, Hanna said, was realizing its potential. Then came May 28.

Lusk estimated 70 percent of trees were defoliated. He couldn’t find most of the annuals because they were buried in the ground. Perennials were pummeled. Greenhouses were damaged. A promising summer was buried under small drifts of hail, much of it the size of golf balls.

“When you work every day for months and things look really nice and it’s devastated in half an hour or so, it’s discouraging, very discouraging,” Lusk said. “There was just a tremendous amount of work ahead.”

Like roofs on houses and hoods on cars, the botanical gardens got a new look, too, after hail caused an estimated $400 million in damage throughout Amarillo. Rains and cooler-than-usual temperatures in June and July were crucial to recovery, but before that did any good came the volunteer help.

“Greg and his staff, there’s two or three and that’s it,” Hanna said. “They couldn’t possibly do it all by themselves. It’s absolutely paramount to have volunteers to help.”

On May 29, 48 people, most unfamiliar to the Botanical Gardens staff, came to begin clean up and stayed until 10 p.m. Chick-Fil-A fed them. The next day, about 25 continued to work. Youth groups have lent a hand. Lusk estimated 200 different volunteers contributed in some way.

“It was a kick in the shins to have invested all that time and money and then to be at square one,” said Ken Pirtle, vice president of the botanical gardens board and a longtime volunteer. “It’s just so gratifying to see so many in the community help.”

The help included donated plants, trimming, pruning, mowing, weeding, fertilizing, planting, and cleaning — lots of cleaning. A wedding three nights after the hailstorm went on as scheduled. The gardens have been on an extreme makeover since.

Flowers that bloom only in spring couldn’t be saved, but Lusk said the average person would not see a difference.

“It’s bounced back pretty well, but it won’t be until next spring that it’s fully recovered,” Lusk said. “If that hailstorm had happened later, like now, it wouldn’t have responded. But it had time to recover. Then there’s nature’s ability to heal and respond to damage.”

Pirtle, retired Amarillo College chairman of visual arts, was pulling weeds at the botanical gardens on Friday when he stopped to take stock in the then and now.

“I was just blown away,” he said. “I just thought how this place has come a long, long way from what it was. It speaks to the resiliency not only of the plants in the Panhandle, but the people who live here.”